218. Does a spirit preserve any trace of the thoughts and ideas it had or the knowledge it acquired in past lives? “It retains a vague memory, which gives the spirit what you call ‘innate ideas’.”

a) So the theory of innate ideas is not pure fantasy? “No, the knowledge acquired in each life is not lost. When a spirit is free from the material body, it always remembers what it has learned. It may forget this knowledge partially or temporarily when it reincarnates. However, the dormant intuition that it maintains helps it advance. If this intuition did not exist, the spirit would always have to begin its education from scratch. In a new life, a spirit picks up from the point at which it had left at the end of its previous life.”

b) If that is the case, there must be a very close connection between two consecutive lives? “That connection is not always as close as you might think, since the conditions of the two lives are often very different, and the spirit may have made considerable progress in the interval between them.” (216)